Green

Morning broke clear and cold and fine.  I sat in the lobby with Curtis, the driver who would take us to Park City, waiting for Dick.

"Did they get good snow in the mountains?"

"Oh, yea man.  I had to take a woman up from the airport last night.  It took forever.  The snow was coming down so hard you couldn't see.  There were wrecks all over the place.  The police were everywhere.  That woman. . . she kept freaking out.  We were only going about five miles per hour, then we'd stop.  Once a truck was beside us and she kept screaming she was afraid it would slide into us.  She'd slide over into the opposite seat and go on and on as if I could do something.  It was something."

Good snow.  That meant we would be skiing for sure.  But I was nervous.  I hadn't skied for fifteen years.  Jesus, really?  I wasn't in the best shape.  I wasn't in good shape at all, really.  My left knee hurt all the time so that I could barely limp up a set of stairs.  I kept telling myself it would heal, but it hadn't, and now I thought about what it would do in a fast turn.  It was more than my knee, though.  It was something else.   It was everything.

"Hey," Dick said.  "You ready?"

"Fuck you."

It was Sunday and there was no traffic this early in the morning.  The roads were clear and good.

"I wish we'd have heard from Beth," I said.

"She hasn't returned my email."

Dick had met Beth Raymer a few weeks before and had dinner with her and her friend.  They'd gone out a few times in a group and had been emailing one another.  But Dick, who has begun to fancy himself a writer, sent her a short story he had written, and he hadn't heard from her since.

"Maybe you should send her a mix tape," I said.  "What the fuck were you thinking?"

Her memoir, "Lay the Favorite," had been made into a movie with Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Vince Vaughn, and it opened the Sundance Festival on Saturday night.  Dick had tried, but he hadn't been able to get tickets.

"Whatever," he said.

I couldn't say much.  This was Dick's trip, really.  He had gotten the room online at Hotels.com.

"I booked it, but it only has one bed.  We can get a roll away, but it's big enough we could probably both sleep in it."

"Get the roll away," I said.  We were both envisioning a Holiday Inn Express with a small balcony, bumping our shins on the metal framing every time we wanted to go to the bathroom.  But it was clear as we drove into the Canyons that this was not the case.

"Wow," Dick said, "they've really done a nice job up here."

Curtis dropped us off at the big wooden entrance.  "Sundial," it said.  I looked up at the slopes just minutes away.

"Holy shit," I said to Dick, grabbing my bags as he paid Curtis.  It was still early morning, too early to check into the room, so we left our bags with the desk and went straight away to rent some gear.  The girl helping me was from Argentina.

"What kind of skis do you need?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What kind of skier are you?"

"Oh. . . I'm terrific," I said, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of someone young and pretty.  At least not yet.  "I haven't skied in fifteen years."

She laughed, went to a big wrack, and came back with a pair of skis.  I looked at them having no idea.  I had been told that skis were different now, shorter with a different shape.  I'd like them, I was told.  They were easier to turn.

"You sure," I said trying not to sound as uncertain as I was.

"We'll see," she said.  She stared into my eyes.  I didn't know whether to be excited or terrified.  I was both.

Dick was already outside when I hobbled out in my plastic boots.

"They have lots of Blues," he said.

"I need a Green.  Come on. . . I haven't skied forever."

"There's a Green up here, to.  Let's go."

I didn't believe him, really.  My friends are like that.  I act tougher than I am, always trying to be a hero.  I get myself into some pretty ugly places doing that.  So when we got to the lift, I asked the boy scanning our tickets, "There is a Green up here, no?"

He didn't look at me like I needed a babysitter, really.  He smiled and said, "Yes."

There was a tiny uphill slope to the chair, and already I was having trouble.  I tried to pole my way up with my skis flat looking like a grunting idiot.  By the time I caught up with Dick, the lift chair had passed.  We'd wait for the next one.  Cold as it was, I was sweating.

"This will be perfect.  The fresh snow is only about six inches deep, but it will slow you down a bit.  You'll be fine."

I looked out over the mountain.  Nothing looked like a Green.  I should have asked if there were Yellows, I thought.

I passed the first test alright, though.  I didn't fall when the chair dumped us out.

"Over here," Dick called.  He was standing by a sign pointing to Green.  I slid over to him and he began giving me pointers.  Yea, yea, yea, I thought.  I looked around.  The slope was full of little kids learning how to ski.  I hoped I wouldn't run any of them over.

"See you at the bottom," I said, and pushed off.  And suddenly I was gliding.  I did what the kids did, turning back and forth across the slope in big, wide turns.  Already I could feel the pain in my left knee, but it wasn't debilitating yet.  I got to a place where the hill took a drop and hoped I could stop without falling over.  I hoped I could stop at all.  Dick skied up beside me.

"You look good," he said.

"Yup.  I was kicking six year old ass," I said with mock pride.  "It's O.K.  I'm remembering.  Let's go."

Dick ran the Green with me a second time.

"O.K." I said.  "I'm just going to run this until I can keep my skis pointed down the hill the whole way."

"I'll meet you at the hut at one, then, and we'll ski down for lunch," he said.  "Is that good?"

"Sure, that's fine."

Then I was "alone" on the mountain.  "Green," I thought.  "What a sissy."